From the back of the box:
Thirteen-year-old Kyra has grown up in an isolated community without questioning the fact that her father has three wives and she has twenty brothers and sisters. That is, without questioning them much - if you don't count her secret visits to the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels to read forbidden books, or her meetings with Joshua, the boy she hopes to choose for herself instead of having a man chosen for her.
But when the Prophet decrees that she must marry her sixty-year-old uncle - who already has six wives - Kyra must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family forever.
When I received this box in the mail with the five CDs inside, I thought if nothing else, it would help pass some windshield time, while I was behind the wheel in traffic. However, as the story of Kyra, the little girl growing up in a polygamist family unfolded, I found myself more and more interested in finding out what would happen next.
***
This is a story written for young adults, but I enjoyed it as a not-so-young adult and plan to pass it on to a few younger people that I know. When the story was finished, I found myself wanting to know more, wanting the story to continue, and I just sat there in my car, in my driveway, listening to the dead silence of the completed CD. Then an interview started between the author, Carol Lynch Williams and Dr. Michael Tunnell. I listened to the whole interview there in my driveway, which I found very interesting as well.
There are probably going to be a number of parents and teachers who think that the subject matters presented in this book are too mature for young adults. I happen to disagree with these parents and agree with the author, Carol Lynch Williams, when she said in her interview that we "shouldn't pull any punches with older kids." They happen to be a lot smarter than we think, anyway. Also, there is no better way to get a kid to read than to give them material to read that covers things, ideas, places, and characters that are new, exciting, scary, and contain places that they've never seen or heard of, or like in this case...lifestyles that are so odd, controversial, and precarious. Isn't that what we adults like to read, too?
To make the whole story even better...this audio version is read by Jenna Lamia, who does an excellent job; I mean she gets Kyra's voice and personality spot on!
Highly recommended as a young adult novel.
